


Tony Stark Doesn't Have a Heart

by hcb53139



Category: Iron Man - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers
Genre: Gen, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 11:22:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6655909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hcb53139/pseuds/hcb53139
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or does he</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tony Stark Doesn't Have a Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Review please! Authors love comments.

Tony notices things. 

1.

He notices how when Natasha spars with Clint or Steve or whoever, her body moves with such grace and agility and flexibility. It’s almost like she’s dancing. 

So he buys her tickets to the best ballet in town, and considering they lived in New York, it was pretty damn good. 

Her eyes shine with admiration as she remains mesmerized by the dancer in the spotlight. The girl is dressed in all white, standing tall with her back straight and arms above her head, eyes closed. Even someone as uncaring for the arts as Tony can appreciate the beauty. But out of the corner of his eye, Tony can see the way Natasha tears her eyes away, face dimming with a familiarly wistful but unplaceable emotion.

Now, Tony can’t have that happening. He'll have to do something about it.

One day Natasha is lounging on the living room couch watching Say Yes to the Dress, when Tony excitedly rushes in, looking like an absolute. Grease stains everywhere, eye bags deep and dark from lack of sleep, and his hair isn’t... great either. 

“Natasha! Natasha! Natasha!” He stops in front of the TV and shouts her name with way too much energy for someone who probably hasn't slept in three days.

“I heard you the first time.” Natasha leans a little to the side so that she can see if Courtney really decided to go with that _hideous_ blue floral dress. 

Tony just moves around to block her view again, and this time she looks up at his face.

“I have a surprise for you! But you’ll have to be blindfolded, of course.” Tony pleadingly holds out a blindfold for her.

“Really, Tony?” She stares, “I don’t put on blindfolds just because someone asks me to.”

“Please?” He pouts a little but his puppy eyes aren’t out yet; those are undeniable. “Pretty please?” He tries again, this time widens his eyes and _there are the puppy eyes_. Natasha is only human.

“Ugh, _fine_ ,” She grumbles as she snatches the blindfold and fastens it around her head, “You know I can’t resist that face.” 

Tony beams at her just before she slips the fabric over her eyes, and he takes her hand to guide her somewhere.

“Look, Stark, you better not be leading me into a kiddie pool filled with jello again while Clint is recording whole thing on camera, because I swear, this time, I’ll do a whole lot worse than–”

“ _Relax_! It’s a good surprise, I promise!”

She can feel them going down a few floors (4, to be precise), but then leads her down an unidentified hallway (she memorized the layout of the tower years ago).

She's a bit alarmed. 

Natasha hears Tony open a door and whisper to her, “We’re here.”

She steps in, and something about it feels familiar, despite her obviously never being there before. 

“Ok, you can take the blindfold off now!”

She slowly, hesitantly lifts the blindfold off her head and she’s not sure what she expects, but what she sees is a room with mirrors on all four walls and a single bar running across one side, with a variety of dance shoes laid out across the side of the room. 

“So, what do you think?” Tony gushes, looking at her expectantly. The silence drags on long enough that he starts to look unsure, 

"What's wrong?" He says, "Do you not like it? Fuck, sorry, was I being presumptuous? Or is it the shoes? You _are_ a size 5, righ–"

She steps forward to hug him. 

 

2.

Tony notices how sometimes when the team is having dinner together, Steve gets a daydreamy look, like he's looking beyond Clint telling his most recent accident with toasters, like he's...looking into the past, almost. 

Tony does a little bit of digging, and he finds out that when Steve was a child, his mother would make him her ratatouille with her special recipe. The dish was a lot less common in modern day. 

So, apparently, Steve doesn’t really like twenty first century food.

Steve is punching the life out of one of the bags in the gym (not that it had one in the first place, but still) when Tony rushes downstairs, hair messy and– _is that an apron?_

“Steve! Stop abusing my babies and come to the kitchen!" 

Steve is confused, but he stops what he’s doing and treads upstairs with Tony.

They step into the kitchen, and Steve is horrified by what he sees. At least twenty pots and pans, all dirty, are stacked in the sink. There’s flour on the impossibly-high roof, spilt tomato sauce on the floor, and everything is a _mess_.

“Oh yeah, don’t mind the mess,” Tony grins sheepishly, “I blew up the kitchen about ten times before I got it right. The smoke alarm went off at least thirty times.”

Tony scratches his head, and then brightens and pipes up, “Right! Wait! Let me get you what I was going to show you in the first place!”

He goes to the oven and sticks an oven mitt lad hand in to bring out a pan of a familiar substance. Different colored slices of vegetables laying on top of each other in a beautiful and colorful array, the surfaces of the pieces browning slightly from the baking.

“Is this–” Steve chokes a little because the smell brings back so many memories of Brooklyn and Bucky and his mother.

“Yes, it is,” Tony looks and sounds proud at first, but he hunches over a bit, “I hope I’m not really offending you, since I’m a pretty terrible cook. You look kind of sad during meals sometimes, and I thought I would try to make you happier so I went and stalked your files, basically.” He beams at Steve.

“No, Tony, this is perfect, thank you,” Steve starts to mutter as he scrambles for a spoon or a fork so that he can take a bite, “Thank you.” He murmurs again. 

“Ha! No problem! Vegetable oil tastes better than motor oil anyways.”

Steve shoves a forkful of the food into his mouth, and he doesn’t care that it’s piping hot or that it doesn’t taste exactly like he remembered it, but he loves it. 

He loves just the semi-familiar aroma of it. He loves that Tony put so much thought into it. 

It becomes a tradition between the two of them that Steve would tell Tony about a food from his childhood, and they would try to recreate it together.

There's a new twinkle in Steve's eyes.

 

3.

Tony notices that sometimes when people speak to Clint, he doesn’t respond. Actually, this observation isn’t particularly hard. 

One morning, the team is having breakfast in the communal kitchen. Thor, who’s sitting to Clint’s right, asks with a booming voice whether or not his “FRIEND EYE OF HAWK WOULD LIKE THE LAST PANCAKE.”

Clint doesn’t respond, and he has no reaction when Thor repeats the question.

But when Natasha, to his left, repeats the question in a level voice, he immediately replies. 

“Duh, can’t have Thor eating all of them. Plus, Bruce’s pancakes are fucking phenomenal.” But Clint’s too late. Thor had taken Clint's silence as a no and had happily munched on the pancake.

Tony knows what’s wrong. 

Clint is deaf in one ear.

So Tony starts to build some hearing aids for Clint. It’s not just out of sheer niceness and friendliness, but Tony realizes that Clint _needs_ these. He needs them for when they’re fighting alien demigods, and he sure as hell needs them when they’re having a Star Wars marathon because nobody should have to listen to the life changing “Luke, I am your father.” with only one ear. 

Tony works extra hard, improving the material and making sure that it wouldn’t break easily, due to the extreme situations that Clint was due to find himself in. 

He finally finishes his masterpiece and he really wants it to be a surprise for Clint, so he attempts to sneak into his room when he’s sleeping to slip the hearing aids onto his dresser. It doesn’t turn out quite as well as Tony expected.

In all fairness, Tony is a grown adult who shouldn’t need reminder not to go creeping in an assassin/spy’s room while they’re sleeping.

So as soon as the door creaks open and Tony tiptoes about five centimeters into the room, he finds himself pressed to the wall, face-first, with his hands behind his back, a knife to his throat, and a sleepy but still deadly Clint behind him.

“I’m sorry! It’s Tony! Tony Stark! Genius, billionaire, yada yada yada. Your friend! The great Avenger! Iron Man! Not a threat!” Clint's grip on his wrists actually kinda hurts. 

Clint immediately lets go after he realizes that Tony is, indeed, not a threat, but narrows his eyes suspiciously.

“What’re you doing in my room?”

Tony bends to pick up the hearing aids that were dropped to the ground in the middle of their little debacle, and holds it out for Clint to see.

“I made you these since I noticed you were having trouble, and I didn’t want you to get killed in battle,” Tony starts to explain, “And I wanted to surprise you, but clearly that wasn't a very bight idea.”

“You know, for a genius, you can be surprisingly thick.” _Thank you_.

“Ha ha, funny.” _You’re welcome_.

Thor has never managed to snatch the last pancake ever again. 

 

4.

Tony notices a problem with Bruce as well.

Actually, it wasn’t even Bruce, it was the Hulk. During one particular battle that Falcon (aka Sam Wilson, aka Steve’s new bestie) decides to join them in, the Hulk makes an appearance as well.

When Hulk is done smashing everything (probably costing Coulson a shit ton of paperwork, but that’s the status quo for every mission the Avengers have ever went on), Tony notices something strange.

As Sam soars high above their heads, Tony sees the Hulk mesmerized by him, eyes following Sam up until he landed in front of them. 

Tony flips his faceplate down and takes off into the sky, carefully watching the Hulk’s movements. Just as he predicted, the big green jolly monster’s eyes follow his movements carefully, and watches Tony’s suit fly through the air.

Then, Hulk turns into Bruce and the doctor stares at Mark V for a few moments longer, before putting his head down to find some pants with a hint of sadness (if it’s possible to not look sad while searching for your pants in Central Park). 

They return to the Avengers Tower (when had it stopped being the Stark Tower? Tony forgets.) and do the stuff they usually do after battles; clean up, shower, and sleep.

The next morning, Tony walks into the kitchen while Bruce is having breakfast and quietly reading a book.

“Bruce!” Tony quips excitedly, but Bruce doesn’t respond. He’s used to ignoring Tony, because usually all Tony asked was whether or not he wanted to go blow shit up with him.

To be fair, he eventually always gives in and the experiments usually turn out to be fucking awesome, but that's an entirely different topic. 

“Bruce! Come on, I want to show you something!” The doctor finally looks up from his book because Tony never says that he wants to _show him_ something. Tony always says that he wants to _blow up_ something.

Bruce tilts his head and that's all he's willing to offer, but Tony just grabs his wrist and pulls him from his seat.

“Come on.”

Tony is walking towards the balcony and cues up his Iron Man suit, and soon he’s enclosed in the armor, repulsers and all.

“Hurry up.” Comes the robotic voice that still somehow manages to sound sincere and urgent when Bruce just stares at Tony.

“What are you doing?”

“ _We_ ,” Tony emphasizes as he flips the faceplate up, “Are going flying.” Then he spreads his arms like he expects applause. 

“What?” Bruce asks. 

“We’re going flying!” Tony exclaims, “Come on, I know you want to. I can even tell that the big guy wants to. Now hurry up and LET’S GO FLYING!!”

Bruce has wanted to be able to fly since, well, forever, because all the Other Guy knew how to do was smash, and he wished that he could be as elegant and graceful as the superheroes that could fly and soar through the sky.

He wished he had that much freedom. 

“How?” He finally asks, and Tony lets out a whoop as if he had been waiting for Bruce to ask that question. 

“Just hold on tight.” Tony says as the stoic face of Iron Man encloses Tony’s excited one again, and Bruce follows his advice. He holds on tight.

As the wind whistles in his ears and he feels the wind in his hair. He feels like the king of the world. 

And if the Hulk now likes to leap from rooftops and hold his arms out like a bird during battles, it’s definitely not Tony’s fault. 

 

5.

Tony doesn’t notice anything wrong about Thor at first, actually.

Seriously, though, this guy was happy 24/7. He was always booming about his noble home Asgard, or his dearly beloved Jane, his new Misgardian friends, and Pop Tarts.

Ah, yes, Pop Tarts.

It turns out that the only thing Tony can do to make Thor feel better is something about Pop Tarts. 

The problem is, the Pop Tarts never seem to heat up fast enough for Thor. He would pop in the as many of the pastries as the little toaster could hold, and then gobble them all up as soon as they were done, and then Thor would be left Pop Tart-less. Actually, he still had Pop Tarts, but they weren’t toasted, which was a crime.

Pop Tart-less Thor meant trouble. 

Once, Steve had made the mistake of asking a miserable-looking Thor what was wrong. He had immediately perked up and almost started crying in the middle of his monologue, where he had been surprisingly whiny and complained about the absence of the “TREAT THAT MUST BE MADE BY GODS. I MUST ASK FATHER IF HE HAD CREATED THESE DELIGHTFUL PASTRIES WHEN I GET THE CHANCE TO GO BACK TO ASGARD.” Then he had went into great detail about how the “small boxes with slits in them that turned Pop Tarts into heaven itself” were unable to satisfy him. 

Minutes of whining turns into hours, and Steve left the kitchen 4 hours later, dazed and confused, with his brain filled with only the words “Pop Tarts”, “Heavenly”, and “Sad”.

Tony decides to take matters into his own hands. He spends days down in the workshop, and nobody is particularly surprised by his absence, because Tony was always down in his lab doing who knows what, but then one day he emerges from his lab, sweaty and greasy, but yielding results.

He holds up a white box with strange gadgets on the side triumphantly silently, and Natasha raises a brow at him.

“So….?” She urges him on.

“So what?”

“So what does that thing do?”

“Oh!” Tony seemed genuinely confused for a second there and he looked back at his creation proudly, as if snapping out of a daze, and Natasha wonders how long it’s been since Tony last slept. “This, this is a custom-made Pop Tart Toaster.”

“Ummm, all toasters are Pop Tart toasters.” Clint said to Tony as if his IQ weren’t 245. 

“No, but this one is special,” Tony explains and ignores the fact that Clint said that just to get a rise out of him, “This one, you just have to place a line of boxes of Pop Tarts on this little walkway thingy, and then as soon as the Pop Tarts _inside_ the toaster are done toasting, then the machine has these hand thingies that’ll come out and open the next box, rip open the packaging, and then put it into the toaster. So as long as you keep enough boxes of Pop Tarts on the walkway, you’ll never, ever, have to eat cold, untoasted, Pop Tarts again!” The last part sounded suspiciously like product placement.

“FRIEND TONY! HOW I MUST THANK YOU FOR THIS GADGET. IT HAS TRULY FULFILLED MY DEEPEST CRAVINGS OF THESE SUGARY RECTANGLES!”

 

6.

Tony notices many things about Bucky, but at the same time doesn’t really seem to see anything useful. The Winter Soldier is closed off and he doesn’t show any emotion, even less than Natasha. 

The first thing anyone sees when they look at him is the huge metal arm and they would quickly look away when they felt the intimidating stare of the soldier’s eyes on them. 

Tony didn’t.

He hadn’t exactly meant to make that his first impression, but when the elevator doors slid open and Steve walked in with Bucky behind him, Tony had let out a wolf whistle.

“Well, would you look at that arm?” He marvels to himself and his vision never leaves the beauty of a left arm that Barnes has. Tony can feel Bucky’s eyes boring into the top of his head, but he does a decent job of ignoring it. 

“Hot _damn_ ,” He says again, “Zola did a good job. That is a _fantastic_ looking arm there. Hey, Cappy-tan, would you mind if I stole your childhood sweetheart from you for a sec there? I’d really like to take a look at his arm, it seems that it wasn’t exactly designed to be comfortable.”

Steve immediately agrees upon hearing the possibility of Bucky being in any sort of discomfort, and Barnes just stares at Tony’s perfectly gelled hair as he's led down to the workshop. 

Tony is so focused on the arm that Bucky thinks that maybe he’d just forgotten that there was an actual human being attached to it. He tinkers around with the prosthetic, doing God knows what to Bucky’s arm, but he doesn’t really mind.

Tony scribbles furiously on his tablet and takes pictures of _everything_

The team doesn’t see Tony for the next week, but according to Jarvis, he’s still alive, and that’s good enough for them. 

Tony finally bustles into a meal one day, wearing his usual mad scientist look, and he’s holding something. Something, as in a metal arm.

“Bucky! Can I call you Bucky? I feel like only Steve calls you Bucky, and what does Bucky even mean? Does it mean that you have a lot of bucks? Or do you like to kick back your legs like a horse a lot? Wait, I’m digressing– _anyways_ , I made you a new arm! Come on! Try it out try it out try it out!” Tony says all in one breath and none of the others bat a lash because they’re used to Tony’s rambling, but Bucky is speechless and his spoon is mid-air.

“What?” He manages to croak out at last. 

“Bucky! New arm! Try on!” Tony says.

“Well–all right, then.” Bucky gets up and watches Tony switch out his battered old arm for the new and shiny one.

“See this button, I even added lasers, a place to shoot out confetti–yeah, don’t ask–, and these mini repulsers for…reasons. You can even shoot fire out of this.” Tony explains all the gadgets on the arm, and although they’re giving Bucky a headache, he’s impressed.

And if anybody had any complaints about Bucky showering them with confetti built into his arm whenever they said something stupid, they knew they had Tony to blame. 

Once upon a time, somebody said that Tony Stark didn’t have a heart. 

Once upon a time, this person was a liar.


End file.
